


The Narrow Path

by Trobadora



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-05
Updated: 2012-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-29 00:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan, on the way through the wardrobe, back to England. (Italicised paragraphs are from LWW.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Narrow Path

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wojelah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wojelah/gifts).



_"Then in the name of Aslan," said Queen Susan, "if ye will all have it so, let us go on and take the adventure that shall fall to us."_

Queen Susan is far from fearsome, but the sense of foreboding is strong, and grows as they enter the thicket.

With every step the woods seem to close in on her, and her thoughts seem scarcely her own. A memory appears in her brain, sudden and strange and obtrusive like the lump in her throat, and she knows a lamppost for a lamppost, but her common thoughts slip from her grasp. Her hunting attire feels strange against her skin, her bow and arrows awkward in her grasp, and the very words she speaks are shifting in her mind and on her tongue. Tree branches close in on her, not Dryads grasping but walls closing, and then leaves turn to fur, and she is squeezing through something narrow and constricting.

The world is growing small. Her very skin is contracting. Her _mind_ is shrinking, strangling her.

 _And next moment they all came tumbling out of a wardrobe door into the empty room, and they were no longer Kings and Queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in their old clothes._

She will say, later, that she remembers nothing of it, that it was all a childish game. But she can never again shake the fear. Perhaps this, too, will be taken from her, her world will shrink again and she will wake to find herself in a body not hers, a mind not hers, a life smaller and narrower still.

All she wants is to grow out of it again.


End file.
